Dreaming of a better future? Ali Smith, Malcolm Gladwell and more on books to inspire change

As our thoughts turn to life after the pandemic, authors from this year's Hay festival choose books that have inspired lasting change in them

Ali Smith, novelist
Books, and all the arts, naturally and endlessly inspire change because they free up the possibilities between reality and the imagination, and the possibilities for change in us. They never stop doing this. It's one of the reasons the current powers that be are hellbent on controlling the arts, devaluing them, removing easy access to them and controlling history's narratives. Last week I read a debut novel called Assembly by Natasha Brown. It's a quiet, measured call to revolution. It's about everything that has changed and still needs to change, socially, historically, politically, personally. It's slim in the hand, but its impact is massive; it strikes me as the kind of book that sits on the faultline between a before and an after. I could use words like elegant and brilliantly judged and literary antecedents such as Katherine Mansfield/Toni Morrison/Claudia Rankine. But it's simpler than that. I'm full of the hope, on reading it, that this is the kind of book that doesn't just mark the moment things change, but also makes that change possible.
Ali Smith, the author of Summer (Penguin), will present an exclusive film in collaboration with Sarah Wood at Hay festival on 6 June at 6pm.